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A Robin Redbreast in a cage puts all Heaven in a Rage. -- William Blake. "What do you hicks do around here for kicks?" - "The roses grow. People get married. Crazy as anyplace else.". Consider George: he is a normal, conventional average guy. He works hard at his job, is the head of
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A Robin Redbreast in a cage puts all Heaven in a Rage. --William Blake
"What do you hicks do around here for kicks?" - "The roses grow. People get married. Crazy as anyplace else."
Consider George: he is a normal, conventional average guy. He works hard at his job, is the head of his family, is a good citizen. He’s never had much opportunity or taste for questioning his life. He is happy with the normal life that he has made for himself in Pleasantville. But nice inoffensive George is going to be the villain of our story.
Pleasantville is traditional • Life is routine • People live conventional lives designed by others • They are portrayed as conventional types, not individuals • They live by the rules and respect the status quo • This is a town meant for George and those like him.
People live by scripts; they do not think for themselves • So Pleasantville is black and white: everything is simple, nothing is ambiguous. • Everyone knows how to live: they live the way everyone has always lived; they live the way everyone else lives • No one is adventurous; no one is eccentric; no one deviates from the script
The solid black and white citizens of Pleasantville refuse to recognize anything that doesn’t fit their views on how the world should be. Geography lesson: “What’s outside of Pleasantville?” Nothing, of course. Pleasantville books have no contents. No one can learn anything that doesn’t fit with the conventional views which are obviously limited and narrow. P’ville books & maps leave out much of the truth.
Traditional family/gender roles predominate in Pleasantville.
Some people--the Georges-- accept the world and do the best they can while playing by its rules. Some people either can’t or won’t do anything but play by their own rules. Pleasantville is a fable about what happens when these two kinds of people collide. This course is about the ideas that justify people of the second kind and Some prominent examples of that kind. The Theory and Practice of Romanticism
Because not everyone is as content with the status quo as is George. • Consider Bill and Betty. They are not so content, they are dissatisfied, though at first they don’t know why. • They are leading what Thoreau called “lives of quiet desperation.”
Early scenes with Bill are meant to illustrateIn an exaggerated form how people sometimesunthinkingly do what they’ve always done; and how they may be paralyzed by novelty.When Bud doesn’t show up for work, Bill keeps wiping the counter, waiting for Bud to show up and do the next thing in the script so that he can move on. Bill doesn’t know what to do if the script for closing the malt shop deviates. He can’t ad lib.He continues uselessly wiping the counter because that’s what he’s always done.
Pleasantville: Bill says to Bud, referring to the fact that the one thing he really enjoys is painting the Christmas scenes on the Malt Shop windows: Why should I have to wait all year long for one moment that I really enjoy? What’s the point of that? Bud: So people can get their hamburgers! Conventional society requires deferred (or possibly no) gratification.
Important issue here: Can we have civilization if everyone does what they truly want to do? (Freud thought not: civilization runs on repressed sexual instincts, he thought.) Mustn’t people make sacrifices of their dreams so that the hamburgers can be made? What’s the human cost then of a civilization? Is it worth it? Can it be ameliorated? Are hamburgers that important? Perhaps we could do with less and live better. (This will be Thoreau’s message, as we’ll see.)
And the kids have undeveloped and unrecognized sides To themselves. Skip is about to get a big surprise when Mary Sue shows Him one of his undeveloped sides: sexuality.
Basic metaphor of the film: • Pleasantville is black & white. • It uses only a small part of the color palette. • Metaphorically, Pleasantville uses only a small part of the human potential palette. As things happen to liberate people’s potentials, color erupts in Pleasantville
Under the impetus of Mary Sue, the kids begin to DISCOVER their TRUE SELVES(and turn color as they do--people by nature are colored, not gray)
The film suggests that Mary Sue brings a healthy expression of sexuality to kids whose sexuality has been badly repressed. She liberates them from the shackles of sexual convention.
The initial liberation begins with Mary Sue introducing Skip to sex. The word spreads to the other kids. Sexual liberation is an essential part of our story: real life American rebels are sexual pioneers and nonconformists. Sexuality is easily seen as a natural part of who we are. It is very intense, exciting, and fun and once let out, can be hard to control: it often feels like a force of nature, rather than something we control.
Bill needs art supplies and a teacher to really express his natural artistic side; he might have gone his whole life without being lucky enough to be exposed to artistic influences. But sexuality doesn’t need any accessories or training, so it’s Accessible to everyone. And to many it has given two morals: 1. Adults are hypocrites: nothing bad has happened now that we’ve had sex -they just wanted to keep it for themselves: 2. And: how can something that feels this good and loving be bad? We shouldn’t believe everything we’ve been told.
And so sexual experience can lead to • A realization that those in charge may have feet of clay. • An attitude of skepticism toward traditional points of view. • A belief that conventional life can rob one of exciting and Important experiences. • A tendency to follow one’s natural instincts regardless of what adults or other authorities day.
Adults seem to be missing out on something good: “Oh, I don’t think your father would ever do anything like that, dear
Pleasantville has been pleasant and safe because it walled out anything new or threatening • It saw the new as automatically threatening and bad • Allowing passion and liberation will not be safe and pleasant. • Joy and passion have their down sides: you don’t get a rainbow without a thunderstorm
awakenings To their true natures. . .
In each case of liberation there is a convention that has been adhered to that is now broken in order to express the true self: Mary Sue’s convention is that she’s a “slut” who never opens a book The Mayor’s is that he is a rational, calm person who would never do anything unpleasant George’s is that he could never do anything unconventional or love someone who did. Bill’s is that he only paints once a year and is content with that. Betty’s is that she is happy being a traditional housewife The Lovers’ Lane kids’ is that they are content holding hands. But each of them finds something different in themselves:
Mary Sue really has a brain and enjoys using it.
Bill is an artist George finds that he can love an unconventional woman (though he discovers it too late). And Bud. . . What does Bud find out about himself?
Other awakenings • Kids have sex • Betty falls in love--Bill paints her and reveals her true, colored, self to her. • The mayor gets angry. • Bud defends his mother from the gang harassing her. • Kids stand in the rain--it’s a gentle rain standing for the benevolence of Nature.
They are not choosing to be different; they are discovering who they really are; discovering their individuality & identities Your genius will speak from you, and mine from me. That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bill shows us that sexual liberation is only part of the Romantic Package: it is the whole human being that needs to be Freed from unnecessary and artificial social restrictions. Freedom for artistic expression Freedom for intellectual expression Freedom for aesthetic expression in how one dresses, e,g Freedom to consume what one wishes: drugs e.g. Freedom of political expression Freedom of spiritual expression In a nutshell: Freedom to be who one really is despite social pressures to conform to tradition, to live like everyone else.
“Maybe it’s not the sex, Mary Sue” And it isn’t--it’s doing something real, something authentic, Something that expresses who they really are deep down Inside. As Bud says “It’s inside all of us” Sex is only one way of expressing who they really are.
Romantic lesson #1EXPRESS YOUR TRUE SELF: BE FREE Insist on yourself; never imitate -Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
Buddy Holly: Rave On A-well the little things you say and do They make me want to be with you-oo-oo {Refrain} Rave on, it's a crazy feeling and I know it's got me reeling when you Say, "I love you," rave on The way you dance and hold me tight A-well rave on, it's a crazy feeling and I know it's got me reeling I'm So glad that you're revealing your love for me Rave on, rave on and tell me Tell me not to be lonely Tell me you love me only, rave on to me
“Rave-on” is the tune that plays when Bud rebelliously turns the jukebox back on after the City Council has banned rock ‘n roll. Note its themes: • Craziness and irrationality of love • Following one’s heart • Revealing one’s true self (“love”) These are Romantic themes: just why the Council banned rock ‘n roll.
the conventional will attempt to make the newly-liberated retreat to conventionality
Rebellion even in Pleasantville doesn’t come easily: The kids need permission from Bud To turn the juke box back on after the town council has decreed that no one shall listen to that kind of music anymore. They are used to obeying the authorities and their instinct is to do so again
Bill tries to make deals about what colors he will use in order to be able to paint while still remaining respectably within the norms.The kids in the malt shop give in to their traditional respect for authority after the Town Fathers have put forth the Code of Decency banning rock ‘n roll.
Lesson #2: The old ways will reassert themselves and must be resisted by courage and endurance. • Some of the rebels in Pleasantville become • afraid of their new selves • ashamed of themselves for no longer being • “normal” • one’s old conscience will not disappear overnight: • --Betty will suffer pangs of guilt for leaving her • husband and children and committing adultery • with Bill. • --those kids who had pre-marital sex will not lose their • conventional morality so easily: they will feel guilty too.
Conformity suppresses what is natural in us. Fear of being different can lead us right back into the closet.
The judges of normality looking askance (and a bit wistfully) at expressions of authenticity
Defenders of the status quo strike back literature music art sexuality nature change against
